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While there were three new releases to reach the top ten, the top three spots were held by holdovers. As expected, Fifty Shades of Grey won the box office race, but it did so with a much lower number. McFarland, USA was the strongest of the three new releases, while The DUFF earned the best per theater average. The less said about Hot Tub Time Machine 2's debut, the better. Overall, the box office fell 45% to $119 million compared to last weekend. At first glance, this is a disaster; however, this is a post holiday weekend and last week's number one film was artificially inflated at the box office due to hype and Valentine's Day. Compared to last year, the box office was 7% higher. This helped push 2015's lead over 2015 to 8.5% or $1.60 billion to $1.48 billion.
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It's a devastatingly slow week on the home market when it comes to first run releases with only a couple making an appearance, and combined these two films failed to reach $100 million at the box office. There are a few TV on DVD releases that try to make up the difference, but overall it is still a very slow week. Looking at the best of the best, House, M.D.: Season Six on DVD or Blu-ray gets serious consideration for Pick of the Week, but that honor goes to Thriller: The Complete Series on DVD.
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Hot Tub Time Machine is one of those movies you look at just once and know it is going to be stupid. It's a movie about a group of people who travel through time using a hot tub. It's got to be stupid. However, stupid movies can also be entertaining movies. Hell, stupid movies can even be good movies, if the people making them understand the type of film they are involved with. So is that the case here?
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Sales numbers continued to be soft this week with none of the new releases doing strong business. We did have a new number of seller, as The Bounty Hunter opened with 560,000 units and $9.71 million in consumer spending at retail.
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It has been a full month since we had any real activity on the sales chart, and this is starting to take its toll on the overall numbers. New releases were almost nonexistent at the box office, but one of them, Brooklyn's Finest, still managed to top the sales chart this week, albeit with just 297,000 units sold and $4.63 million in consumer spending at retail.
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It's not a bad week on the home market (for this time of year anyway), with a few midlevel hits worth checking out, as well as an assortment of TV on DVD, Limited Releases, and others to fill in the gaps. Of the first run releases, Hot Tub Time Machine is the one I'm looking forward to the most and if it has a good selection of extras, it could be Pick of the Week material. However, the screener won't be shipped to me till tomorrow, so the review will be a few days late at the earliest. That leaves Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage - Blu-ray as the clear Pick of the Week winner.
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Date Night fell out of the top five, but added $7.47 million on 3120 screens in 48 markets for a total of $28.31 million. The film opened in first place in the U.K., but only made $1.97 million on 400 screens, which is about the same as $11 million here. That's not a great start and there's little hope that the film will match its domestic total overseas, but it is still a solid midlevel hit and should show a profit by the time it reaches the home market.
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Easter weekend resulted in records being broken as Clash of the Titans became the biggest Easter opener of all time. The strength of that film and others in the top five helped the box office pull in $177 million overall. That's 38% more than last weekend and 14% more than the same weekend last year. 2010 has now pulled in $2.83 billion, a 10% advantage when compared to 2009's pace. Double-digit growth is amazing and if it can keep this pace up, we could be in for an amazing ride this summer.
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How to Train Your Dragon became the third 3D film to top the box office this year, but its opening didn't match my lofty expectations. Additionally, the rest of the box office wasn't able to compensate and that left the overall box office a little on the soft side. On a positive note, it did rise 1.7% from last weekend to $129 million. On the negative side, that represents a 12% decline from the same weekend last year, ending 2010's winning streak at four weeks. Year-to-date, 2010 has pulled in $2.59 billion at the box office. This figure is still 8.9% higher than the same point last year, which is fantastic.
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As expected, How to Train Your Dragon comfortably won the weekend at the box office, but its early performance can be best described as solid rather than spectacular.
With $43.3 million over the weekend, according to Paramount's Sunday estimate, it was easily able to beat Alice in Wonderland ($17.3 million, per Disney), but falls some way behind the opening of Monsters vs. Aliens, which debuted this weekend last year.
Given Dragon's better reviews, it should have better legs than Monsters vs. Aliens, but it has a lot of work to do if it's going to earn much more than $100 million.
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February was a stronger than expected month, for the most part, but 2010 continued to lose ground to 2009. Hopefully this trend will reverse itself, but it could be tough. Last March started with Watchmen, which earned just over $100 million at the box office. The month ended with Monsters vs. Aliens, which earned nearly $200 million. Granted, between these two releases there were a fair number of bombs, but it might be hard for this year to match last year at the top.
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